Urinary catheters are used as a tool assisting in the draining of the urinary bladder of persons with reduced or non-existing bladder control. The reduced or non-existing bladder control may either be temporary or permanent, where a temporary loss of bladder control may be caused by trauma, loss of consciousness or illness, as an example. An example of a permanent loss of bladder control may be where a loss of a neural connection between the brain or spinal cord and the urinary bladder occurs due to a trauma to the spinal cord, as is often the case with para- and/or tetraplegics.
One example of a urinary catheter which is widely used for draining urine from the urinary bladder is where a catheter tube is inserted into the urethra of a user and the tip of the catheter tube is maneuvered into the urinary bladder forcing the urethral sphincter open and thus providing a drainage channel from the urinary bladder and out of the body via the catheter tube. There are two types of catheters which are commonly used: the permanent catheter and the intermittent catheter. The permanent catheter is a highly flexible catheter which is inserted into the body by medical professionals and stays there for a long period at a time, and the catheter is anchored inside the bladder. The intermittent catheter is usually a single use catheter or a multiple use catheter, which is inserted into the urethra/bladder by the user for immediate drainage of their urinary bladder and is removed from the urethra/bladder subsequent to the drainage. The following disclosure will primarily be concentrated on the intermittent urinary catheter.
There are a number of different types of intermittent catheters which are currently available for the user, such as the SpeediCath™ and EasiCath™ marketed by Coloplast A/S which are conventional one-piece catheter tubes which have an outlet at the distal end which may be used to connect the catheter to a urinary bag for collecting the urine drained from the urine bladder.
Another type of a catheter is disclosed in WO 03/002179 which is a telescopic catheter where one of the telescopic elements is the catheter package and another telescopic element is the catheter member that telescopes from the catheter package. The telescopic catheter is collapsed during storage and transport and extended for insertion into the urethra, providing female users with a compact and discrete catheter which may be used anywhere and without any significant preparation time.
Another type of catheter is disclosed in WO 2008/138351 which discloses a telescopic device having a first tubular member and an extension member having a coupling member that limits the displacement of the extension member within the first tubular member, where the coupling member engages the interior of the first tubular member. This device is a telescopic intermittent catheter, which is also adapted for use by a male user, where the first tubular member and the extension member are adapted in such a way that both telescopic members are adapted to be inserted into the urethra of the user.
The telescopic catheters known in the art, as discussed above, are locked in their extended state, so that the extension member or the telescopic element is prevented from collapsing into their compacted state. This means that after use it is difficult to dispose of the catheter in a discrete manner, for example by dropping it into a garbage bin or back into a storage area, such as a handbag or a pocket.
Thus, there is a need for a telescopic device that may be extended from a collapsed state to an extended state and optionally may subsequently be collapsed into a collapsed state.